We chart delusions through collective agreement.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that our shared beliefs can often be based on illusions that we collectively accept as truth.
Siri Hustvedt's quote emphasizes the idea that the realities we perceive are often shaped by societal consensus rather than objective truth. It reflects on how individuals can collectively agree on falsehoods or delusions, which then form the basis of their understanding and interpretation of the world around them. This concept invites us to question the validity of our shared beliefs and consider the impact of social dynamics on our perceptions.
In practice
During a discussion about social media's impact on public opinion, one might reference this quote to highlight how shared beliefs can distort reality.
Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.
All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.
under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed
People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
IT IS TIME THAT WE ALL SEE GENDER AS A SPECTRUM INSTEAD OF TWO SETS OF OPPOSING IDEALS.
God is God; you are but one of His creatures. Your only joy is to be found in obeying Him, your true fulfillment is to be found in worshiping Him, your only wisdom is to be found in trusting and knowing Him.
My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.
Humans are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them.
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was not part of her disposition.
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